Hong Kong people (Chinese: 香港人), also known as Hongkongers, Hong Kongers or Hong Kongese, are people who are from Hong Kong or live in Hong Kong and considered Hong Kong to be their hometown. Besides being used to refer to a Hong Kong resident, these terms might also be used more loosely to refer to someone who may not have legal residence status in Hong Kong, but has spent an extensive period of time in the city or has a strong cultural connection with Hong Kong. These terms have no legal definition by the Hong Kong Government; more precise terms such as Hong Kong Permanent Resident (香港永久性居民) and Hong Kong Resident (香港居民) are used in legal contexts. However, the terms Hongkongers and Hong Kongese were officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary in March 2014.[1][2][3]

Terms like "Hong Kong people" do not make reference to the ethnicity of a person, and are also independent of Chinese citizenship or residency status. Over 90% of Hong Kongers are of Chinese descent or considered themselves as ethnic Chinese (and most have ancestral roots in the province of Guangdong), but there are also HongKongers of, e.g., Indian, Filipino, Nepalese, Indonesian, Pakistani, Vietnamese or British descent, and expatriates from many other countries live and work in the city.

Hong Kong experienced an exodus of people in the years leading up to the handover of sovereignty from Britain to China in 1997, as a result of which there are now many ethnic Chinese in other parts of the world who regard themselves as Hongkonger. However, some who emigrated during that period have since returned. Migration from mainland China in recent years has brought more Chinese people to Hong Kong.

Due to the one country two systems policy, Hong Kong is a highly autonomous region and has a different political system to China, including a different passport, flag and official language. Furthermore, due to increasing social and political tensions between Hong Kong and Mainland China and desinicization in the territory, in a recent poll, less than a fifth of Hong Kong residents now identify themselves only as Chinese, while 38% percent identify themselves as Hong Kong citizen, while 43% percent have a mixed identity of being Hong Kong and Chinese citizen.[4][5]

Hong Konger is used more often [6] but Hong Kong people, a more direct translation of the term Hèung Góng Yàhn (香港人), which is more frequently used by Cantonese native speakers in Hong Kong when writing or speaking in English. In March 2014, Hongkonger and Hong Kongese both terms are officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary, giving a legitimacy of using both term to represent people from Hong Kong.[1] 香港人 may also be translated as "Hongkongan".[7]

In March 2014, Hongkonger and Hong Kongese were both officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary.[1][2] According to the Dictionary, the first time that the term Hong Kongese appeared was in 1878, while the term Hongkonger appeared even earlier in an edition of a U.S. newspaper The Daily Independent in 1870.[6] Nevertheless, Hong Kongese is rarely used in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Chinese was frequently used in British colony era and the British residing in Hong Kong made up a higher percentage of the population than they do now. (It was common to refer to an individual as Hong Kong Chinese in order to differentiate that person from a Hong Kong Briton.) The term is still used today to refer to Hongkonger of Chinese ancestry rather than all Hongkonger, excluding ethnic minorities in the city.

The Hong Kong Basic Law gives a precise legal definition of a Hong Kong resident. Under Article 24 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong residents can be further classified as non-permanent or permanent residents. Non-permanent residents are those who have the right to hold a Hong Kong Identity Card but have no right of abode in Hong Kong. Permanent residents are those who have the right to hold a Hong Kong Permanent Identity Card and the right of abode in Hong Kong.

The permanent residents of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be:

Chinese citizens born in Hong Kong before or after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region;

Chinese citizens who have ordinarily resided in Hong Kong for a continuous period of not less than seven years before or after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region;

Persons of Chinese nationality born outside Hong Kong of those residents listed in categories (1) and (2);

Persons not of Chinese nationality who have entered Hong Kong with valid travel documents, have ordinarily resided in Hong Kong for a continuous period of not less than seven years and have taken Hong Kong as their place of permanent residence before or after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region;

Persons under 21 years of age born in Hong Kong of those residents listed in category (4) before or after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; and

Persons other than those residents listed in categories (1) to (5), who, before the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, had the right of abode in Hong Kong only.

The above-mentioned residents shall have the right of abode in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and shall be qualified to obtain, in accordance with the laws of the Region, permanent identity cards which state their right of abode.

The non-permanent residents of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be persons who are qualified to obtain Hong Kong identity cards in accordance with the laws of the Region but have no right of abode.

Many migrants and refugees came to Hong Kong from the Canton (Guangzhou) area and other parts of Guangdong province in the 20th century: a substantial number arrived in the mid to late 1940s before the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and many more in the decades followed. Those immigrants from Guangdong and their descendants have long constituted the majority of the ethnic Chinese residents. There is also a large number of residents with ancestral roots in more distant parts of China, such as Shanghai and Shandong. There are also Cantonese people originating from Hakka-speaking villages in the New Territories.[8][10][11][12]

The Cantonese is a form of Yue Chinesecommonly spoken in Hong Kong. As a result, Hong Kong culture is highly Cantonese-influenced. Cantonese is the most popular language in both everyday and formal conversations, as well as in the media and education[13]Members of other Han Chinese groups in Hong Kong (such as Hakka People, Hoklo (Hokkien), Shanghainese, and Teochew) who are Hong Kong-born or raised often assimilate into the mainstream Cantonese identity [14]of Hong Kong. For example, the children of immigrants typically adopt Cantonese as their first language even if their parents' is not.

Hong Kong has many minority ethnic and national groups. Numerically, the largest groups are Filipinos (1.9% of Hong Kong's population in 2011) and Indonesians (also 1.9%).[8] There are long-established South Asian communities, which comprise both descendants of 19th and early 20th-century migrants as well as more recent short-term expatriates. South Asians include Indian, Pakistani, and Nepalese ethnicities, who respectively made up 0.4%, 0.3%, and 0.2% of Hong Kong's population in 2011.[8] Other groups include Americans, Britons, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Japanese, Koreans, Russians, Vietnamese and Thais.[8][15] In 2011 0.8% of Hong Kong's population were white people, many (53.5%) of whom resided on Hong Kong Island where they constituted 2.3% of the population.[16]

The Basic Law allows people whose parents are Chinese or are permanent residents of Hong Kong to acquire right of abode by birth in Hong Kong. Residency rights can also be acquired in some other ways. For example, residents of China may settle in Hong Kong for family reunification purposes if they obtain a One-way Permit (for which there may be a waiting time of several years).

Unlike many countries, Hong Kong does not require applicants for naturalisation to take a citizenship or language test to become citizens.[17] However, Hong Kong migrants and residents are assumed to understand their obligation under Article 42 of the Hong Kong Basic Law to abide by the laws of Hong Kong.

^Lai Tung-kwok (2013-05-22). "Application for naturalisation as a Chinese national". Legislative Council of Hong Kong. Retrieved 2013-12-07.; quote: "However, it has to be pointed out that the knowledge of the Chinese language is only one of the factors to be considered. This does not imply that applicants who do not know Chinese will be refused, nor will those who know Chinese necessarily be eligible for naturalisation as Chinese nationals. ... At this stage, we have no plan to institute examinations similar to those used by some foreign countries in handling naturalisation applications."